Newt's Story: Beyond the Flare

Chapter 5: To Kill a Crank

They were hazy and confusing, as if they were someone else's memories for her to decipher.

She didn't know if the memories were real or not; it was like watching a story on a screen that was now fused deep inside her brain, like the chip had once been. The doctors had told her and the rest of "Group B" (as they so fondly called them) that they had removed everything when they took out the memory blocking chip, but no one was entirely sure that that was the case. It never really was with W.I.C.K.E.D.

Everyone else felt the same. After they had all gotten their memories back and the chip removed, most walked around almost aimlessly, a haunted look on every face. And surprisingly, now that they finally had what they had always wanted, no one cared to talk about the new--old--information. The girls did look at one another differently, however; memories of the previous bonds and friendships each had had with one another and those long forgotten were new information.

Perhaps what they had always wanted wasn't what they had always needed.

Maybe W.I.C.K.E.D. was right; the world was messed up, and she wanted no part of it any more.

And the memories, she couldn't get over the memories. She would often try to think of other things, but somehow everything always pointed back to her past. That curtain is a pretty blue; remember how that was mum's favorite color? There was a chair just like that one over there back at her old house that was surely ruined by now. Those workers over there have the same look her big brother had always gotten whenever their father had beaten him at checkers on the old mattress in the basement that they all had shared. The Cranks in the videos look worse than the ones that always made her brother cry, when he'd hold her tight and tell her everything would be okay, when she felt his silent tears running down the back of her shirt, when he didn't think anyone knew he was dying inside.

Her brother. That was the thing that bothered her the most. Her younger memories were the haziest, but the pain and longing for her brother she never got to see was seared into her mind. She knew her parents were dead; she hadn't cried for them like the rest did when they remembered theirs. She hadn't cried over forgotten friendships lost over death. She hadn't cried for herself when she remembered being scared at night of the Crazies outside the house. She only cried for her brother. He was the only thing that mattered now, the only one she had left. Because although she could hardly remember anything about him--his face swam in a sea full of so many others--she did remember one critical thing.

He wasn't immune.

Wherever he was, if he was still alive--he would die soon, after becoming one of them, one of the Crazies. A Crank.

Sonya refused to let that happen. If she had to kill him to stop the virus from breaking the fragile heart she remembered, then kill him she would.

And that was what led Sonya to the idea of breaking the rest of the Maze survivors out of the W.I.C.K.E.D. compound. Harriet had heard that a few of the boys had done so successfully, and a maybe was close enough for her. They had a plan. They had supplies. They had the numbers. They could make it out, escape whatever W.I.C.K.E.D. had prepared for them all. They would make it out. She didn't know what would happen after their great escape, but she didn't care.

Because only one thing mattered now.

She had to kill her brother.